April 2009

200 Prestwick – Waco, TX

Have you seen the Cotton Crossing Model Home! The 2-story Charleston-styled beauty has a great lake view from the large balcony! Custom details throughout. Hand-scraped hardwoods, custom cabinets throughout, an office/study or guest room with it’s own entrance, energy efficient with radiant barrier and tankless water heaters. It is worth going to see this home just to experience the kitchen-a cook’s dream! Check out the master bath too

Is Waco Real Estate Doing Better Than The DFW Area?

I’ve been hearing all sorts of statistics concerning the Waco real estate market. Unfortunately when I hear those statistics, usually the person telling me those stats can’t quote time periods or other variables that were included in the analysis. When I ask someone, “What time periods or areas or price ranges are we talking about?”. They don’t know! I guess maybe because they’re repeating what they’ve heard somewhere else. I’m a big picture kind of guy. I can’t get the big picture if I don’t know some of the details though.

I just finished reading an article from the Dallas News concerning the DFW housing market. Apparently, new home sales are down about 40% for the first 3 months of this year compared to the same time period last year in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex. That figure closely matches the Waco numbers I just looked at in our MLS for the same time period (Waco new home sales down 41%).

Note/Disclaimer: The figures that I pulled up for the Waco market could be skewed just a little. In our MLS, when I pull up houses that have sold, there’s an age range that I can choose from (New, 0-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-20 years, 20-30 years, and 31+), unfortunately, sometimes the Realtor who listed that property may have mistakenly inputed a wrong year in the MLS. I’ve seen some brand new houses that were listed with an age range of “0-5 Years”, when it should have been tagged as “New” (and homes built in the 60s that were tagged as 0-5 years). When I’m looking at new home sales, I simply choose to look at properties that are tagged with “new” as the price range, so if the data in the MLS is wrong, then my results could be skewed a little. Also, I don’t include “Manufactured Housing” (mobile homes) in my results.

Existing home sales for the DFW area (1st quarter this year compared to last year) were down 20%. Once again, closely matching Waco’s market (Waco existing home sales down 19%).

The data I used for the Waco real estate market includes all areas covered by our MLS (mainly McLennan County and a small handful of homes in outlying areas). I did not break the sales analysis down by zip code, school district, region, subdivision, etc…

Waco and DFW seem to be pretty closely matched an sales data. It appears that Texas, as a whole, is doing better than many parts of the country. Still down from our “highs”, but compared to places like Virginia, Nevada, Arizona, California, etc… We seem to be more stable.

Our home values in the Waco area (and Texas), are doing much better than those in other parts of the country.

Here’s some other key pieces of info:

• Average price per home (not including manufactured housing) for the first quarter of 2009 is only down 3.35% compared to the same time period a year ago
• The Median price is down 12.2% to $99,450

Our median price is down considerably compared to our average price which indicates that more people are buying cheaper properties.

No real surprise that the Waco housing closely matches that of of the DFW area. Texas, as whole, has some really great real estate values (and opportunities).

Waco’s Newest Hospital

Waco officially has a new hospital. Well sort of new. It’s still Hillcrest hospital,  but with a new building, new location, new facilities.

The new Hillcrest Hospital, located at Hwy 6 and I-35, officially opened this past weekend. Providence Hospital isn’t located too far down the road on Hwy 6 (Loop 340). With nursing centers, hospitals, clinices, medial suppliers, etc… Hwy 6 (Loop 340 area) is on it’s way to become the medical mile.

Here’s a great article written by the Waco Tribune Herald detailing some of the features of the new Hillcrest Medical Center: View Hillcrest Medical Center article

$8,000 Tax Credit for Home Buyers – Info

I’ve been getting a lot of calls from first time home buyers in the Waco area wanting to purchase a home. To my surprise, many of them don’t know anything about the $8,000 tax credit that they can claim! Hey almost free money!

This tax credit replaces the tax credit that was put into place last year. With the old credit, you had to pay back the money you received. With the new credit, you don’t have to pay it back!

If you need information regarding the money you can get from the government, here’s a great FAQ you can check out: $8,000 Tax Credit FAQ.

As always, if you have questions not answered by the FAQ, feel free to call us anytime!